Starting with the Android Platform

I have been working a lot with the Swing APIs for a while now; created my own custom components, built filthy rich applications, and wrote a few blogs on the different things I found interesting.

As soon as the first Android phone was available, I went out to get my hands on it (the G1).

Since then, I always wanted to start at least looking into the APIs and writing my first Android app. For different reasons, I haven't been able until a couple of weeks back.

And I finally did it!

I created a really cool Mortgage Calculator for the Android Market. I called it: Mortgage Shark Calculator[2]. It allows you to compare 56 loans in one screen.

Android is easy to learn, especially for anyone who has been playing with the Java 2D API's.

I created a custom View, in which I am drawing the different payment amounts for all the mortgages. I wrote a simple event handler that listens for the touch events on the screen, and when the touch event lasts more than 400 milliseconds I draw a pop up on the screen.

It was extremely easy to make all this custom behavior with the APIs.

I am using the alpha bits of the colors to make the background of the pop up semi-transparent giving it a more professional look.

You can also change the parameters of the comparison matrix by pressing the menu button on your phone, and then editing all the attributes of the loan.

Give it a try and let me know if you would be interested in knowing the details of how I coded any specific piece of it.